Well before the census of these ranks was even partially populated, I expect my audience would have thrown in the towel. Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job has just scratched the surface of paid-but-not-quite-disclosed behavior by prominent economists; what is now needed is some comprehension of the aggregate systemic character of what has become a conventional career path. If you are lucky enough to write a few macrofinance papers that attract the attention of people that matter, and then garnish a plum political job such as under-assistant-subsecretary of the Treasury/Council of Advisors, touching the right political bases, then it just follows that you will in the fullness of time become absorbed into the corporate/financial sector in some reasonably lucrative capacity, and even perhaps later on become a regional Fed governor, all the while speaking out as an “independent” academic voice for the public commonweal. This career trajectory has been a conveyor belt for some time now, at least back to 1970, when Paul Samuelson helped found the hedge fund Commodities Corporation. The issue is not possible compromise of personal virtue of this or that individual in the face of tempting blandishments; it is rather that the proud pretense of “independent expertise” has become thoroughly undermined within the current economics profession. This has been the bane of academic economics, but also, after the crisis, the vessel of its deliverance.

Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis …, loc. 581